This feature is in RUN as of Monday, March 11, 2024
DISCO has now released the ability to share productions straight from the application via a secure FTP connection. Users no longer have to download the production and re-upload to an FTP location or utilize DISCO Services to accomplish this task.
Sharing a production from DISCO
DISCO's Production Sharing via SFTP feature is accessible from the productions page. Each completed production card now includes an option to share the production.
Once you click the share production button, a new window will open. In this window, enter a unique name for the connection you are about to create. Next, for this connection, determine the number of days this set of sharing credentials will remain active. Access expires on the expiration date at 11:59 PM in the timezone of the database. If you decide to expire the connection in 0 days, the credentials will remain active until 11:59 PM of the current day. The expiration date can be set at a maximum of 30 days from the date of the shared connection’s creation and can be expired early at any point.
Once your shared connection credentials have been created, it is important that you copy down the provided passphrase. For security reasons, this is the only time the passphrase will be shown. If the passphrase is misplaced, the shared connection should be revoked and a new one created.
A message template with the FTP connection details and passphrase has been provided so you can easily communicate the information with your recipients. To access the production, a recipient will need to know: host, port, username, and passphrase. Copy the information from the message template and send it to your recipients using your preferred method of communication.
REMINDER: you will have access to the host, port, and username details again later – but not the passphrase.
Accessing a shared production
To access a production shared via FTP, you must use an FTP client. Please note that you will not be able to access a shared production by entering the hostname into your browser’s address bar like a URL. An FTP client must be downloaded and installed separately from the DISCO application. Common FTP clients include FileZilla and WinSCP, but there are many options available.
Depending on the size of your production, it may take several minutes for your shared file to appear on the FTP server. Productions of 10 GBs or less should appear on the server within approximately 30 seconds; productions of 100 GBs or less should appear within approximately 5 minutes. Sharing very large productions (>500GBs) through our production sharing feature is not recommended. Please reach out to discodesk@csdisco.com for sharing options on very large productions.
If you connect to the FTP server and the file is unavailable, please check back later.
Managing a share link
After a shared connection has been created, it can be managed from the Share links section on the completed Production card.
This will open a window that allows you to see a list of all the share links that have been created for a given production. Each active share link will give you the option to see the link details or to “expire the link now.” Expiring the link now will set the expiration date to the current date and time.
You will not be able to delete a production with active share links. To delete a production, expire all active share links first.
Access information
Successful access to a shared production is logged in the application to record who has accessed a given production and when. From the Productions card, click the cog icon to see your share links.
A pop-up window will show you all of the currently active and previously expired share links, along with their expiration date and how many times each link has been accessed. You can expand a row to view more detailed information.
The details section will show you who created the share link and when. It will also show you who expired the link, if applicable.
The download activity section will show when a user was successfully able to authenticate a connection using the provided credentials for the shared production.
Note: This does not indicate whether or not they downloaded the production file itself, only that they were able to gain access to the file.
For security reasons, access will automatically be revoked after 10 failed attempts to establish a connection. Should this occur, the status of the link will become “Expired” and “Expired by” will indicate “Failed access attempts.” Access cannot be restored once a link is expired. New credentials will need to be generated to reestablish access.
For a full access log that includes unsuccessful access attempts, please reach out to discodesk@csdisco.com with the name of the database, production name, and the unique share link name.
For more information on how to run productions in DISCO Ediscovery, please refer to this article.